KENYA: Pastors want AK-47s to protect their flocks against The Religion of Peace

From Jihad Watch by Robert Spencer:

Kenyan pastors ask for AK-47s to counter Islamic jihad attacks

Christianity has never opposed self-defense. “Kenyan Pastors Ask for AK-47s Amid Radical Muslim Persecution,” by Fredrick Nzwili for RNS, November 1 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

As attacks on Christians mount in Kenya’s coastal region, some evangelical pastors in the Mombasa area may no longer be willing to turn the other cheek.Worried about attacks against their churches and congregations, some pastors are asking for rifles to protect themselves from suspected Islamic extremists.

The violence intensified on Oct. 20 and 21, when two evangelical church pastors were killed inside their churches. Pastor Charles Mathole, 41, was killed Oct. 20 as he prayed inside his Vikwatani Redeemed Gospel Church. The following day, East African Pentecostal Church pastor Ibrahim Kithaka was found dead in Kilifi, about 35 miles north of Mombasa.

Christian leaders blame the attacks on increased radicalization of Muslim youth. The attacks have occurred amid protests by Muslims that they were being targeted in Nairobi’s war against terrorism.

“Our many churches are not under any protection. They do not have walls or gates. The government should issue AK-47 rifles to every church so that we can stop them from being burnt, our property from being looted and our pastors and Christians from being killed,” said Lambert Mbela, a pastor at Mathole’s church, during his funeral.

Three weeks before the latest murders, Muslim youth torched a Salvation Army church in the Majengo area in Mombasa to protest the killing of the popular Sheikh Ibrahim “Rogo” Omar and three others by unknown gunmen on Oct.4. The same church was torched last year after the murder of another prominent Muslim cleric, Sheikh Aboud Rogo Mohammed.

Some church officials say the request for arms reflects a growing frustration with the rising insecurity, but others say the move contradicts traditional biblical teachings on nonviolence, [non-violence doesn’t mean that we are obliged to let our loved one’s be killed…] or could put churches and congregations at more risk. [?!?]

“I don’t think arming Kenyan (clerics) will ensure security,” said the Rev. Peter Karanja, the general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Kenya, at a news conference in Limuru, near Nairobi, on Wednesday (Oct. 30). [Perhaps he should go out to Vikwatani to take over for the pastor who was killed.]

[…]

Interfaith initiatives in the coastal region have allowed different faiths to live in relative calm, but the attacks are threatening decades of peaceful coexistence, according to the Rev. Wilybard Lagho, vicar general of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mombasa.

“I think we need to restrengthen interreligious dialogue. The problem is in the minds, and we need to win them back,” said Lagho, calling the request for guns a shallow solution to a complex problem.

Yes, dialogue will certainly fix the problem. It always has before, right?

Some Muslim leaders, meanwhile, have backed the pastors’ call for arms but said there should be a thorough vetting of who gets a gun.“It is a good idea, but not all clerics should get the guns. Some are rogue clerics and may pose more danger to other religious leaders,” said Sheikh Juma Ngao, chairman of the Kenya Muslim National Advisory Council.

Yes, of course. It’s the Christian clerics who are the problem, not the innumerable Muslim clerics preaching jihad and hatred of the kuffar.

The storm is rising more quickly in Africa than elsewhere, but it is rising everywhere.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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15 Comments

  1. Lin says:

    These stories are not reported by the MSM. And the majority are not well informed by choice! Bad leadership is punishment for sin. Much prayer and fasting is required at this time! God save us!

  2. disco says:

    I always thought the liturgical use of the beretta was a joke.

    We need to pray for the brethren in Nigeria and in all the places where “dialogue” is offered as a solution to cold blooded murder.

  3. take a real close look at the foundation and history of Islam. How did the myth of the ‘religion of peace’ even get started?

  4. APX says:

    “I think we need to restrengthen interreligious dialogue. The problem is in the minds, and we need to win them back,” said Lagho, calling the request for guns a shallow solution to a complex problem.

    Why are we so obsessed with “dialogue” and “dialoguing” with other “faiths”. It obviously isn’t working. Maybe we should have another crusade or something. Are we still allowed to do that?

  5. Cathy says:

    Is it still to be considered awful and offensive to pray for the persecuted and the conversion of the persecutors at Mass?

  6. SKAY says:

    “Why are we so obsessed with “dialogue” and “dialoguing” with other “faiths”.

    Because it gives time for those trying to accomplish a leftist or radical Islamic takeover more easily. They learned the lesson of pre WWII Germany. Remember Neville Chamberlain and his infamous “peace in our time” statement-and how that worked out. Those groups in this country learned it well and they use the word “peace” to manipulate the “low information voters” or the perpetually naive . Unfortunately, those who do not know true history are doomed to repeat it.

  7. SKAY says:

    http://rt.com/news/nigeria-gunmen-wedding-killed-157/

    Another example of the “religion of peace” in Nigeria.

  8. Some church officials say the request for arms reflects a growing frustration with the rising insecurity, but others say the move…could put churches and congregations at more risk.

    How often we hear this reasoning to justify impotence: that the act of self-defense is provocative. When are we going to wake up to the fact that the enemies of Christianity and Western civilization are already doing as much as they possibly can against us, to the extent God permits? And when we have refused to use all the means at our disposal to help ourselves, is God under any obligation to rescue us?

  9. Sword40 says:

    Sure let them “dialog” but they stand in a stronger position if they are armed while dialoging. A just defense is perfectly fine. But let their magazines be full and plentiful.

    This kind of makes the 1950’s Mau Mau uprising look like kids play.

  10. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    “The government should issue AK-47 rifles to every church”, said Pastor Mbela. With what strings (likely to be) attached, if any?

    Where hear of the sense of this being promoted by a Redeemed Gospel Church pastor (and an apparently prominent Sheikh!), and opposed by the general secretary of the National Council of Churches and a vicar general of a Roman Catholic Archdiocese – is that characteristic (for Kenya)?

    One can imagining Muslims living in some relative calm of peaceful coexistence (people who do not want to be slaughtered themselves by other Muslims who deem them no better – or even worse – than”kuffars”) being happy to see such an arming – is that the Sheikh’s position?

    Miss Anita Moore, O.P., says, “the enemies of Christianity and Western civilization are already doing as much as they possibly can against us” – but to overcome any ‘inconvenience’ of armed resistance they would have to do more – and would presumably not only aspire to, but do so, in terms of ‘firepower’, scope of terror, etc., which is not in itself any argument against making it as disuasively inconvenient for them as possible, as there seems much to be said for Churchill’s observation about “one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last.”

  11. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    Sorry: “We hear…”!

  12. Dienekes says:

    Defense of oneself and the innocent against unjust violence ought not to depend on the grudging acquiescence of distant politicians–who care only for power–whether here in an increasingly uncivil America or a Third World backwater. Even in Augustine’s Earthly City a degree of justice was to be sought after.

  13. JonPatrick says:

    “Religion of Peace” means peace in their terms, with Islam in control of the society and Christians living at best as second class citizens, paying the Jizya, not being allowed to proselytize or build new churches, etc.

  14. Maltese says:

    Maybe playing Britney Spears music more Britney Spears music in front of Christian churches to these muslim fanatics would help even more than AKs!

    However, some of these freaks only respond to blood.

  15. MAJ Tony says:

    Perhaps it’s time the Bishops learn the meaning of “turn the other cheek.” I don’t think the Lord expected his people to all just got to their slaughter. Can’t convert the world if all the Christians are dead.

    http://www.easymemes.com/uploads/memes/39385_aT385jbUWgzElAz.jpg

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